How about providing free internet to China and Russia, to give the people there proper information without government oversight?
You know both Russia and China are perfectly capable of targeting and destroying satellites, yes?
Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
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Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#12I thought that laser connectivity wasn't going to be available until V2 of the satellite went in to operation/orbit, and that's not going to happen until SpaceX gets Starship or the modified Falcon off the ground?
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#13Man, I love when sci-fi becomes reality. It's the cool things that get me excited for some parts of the future, and this is exactly that.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#14I thought that laser connectivity wasn't going to be available until V2 of the satellite went in to operation/orbit, and that's not going to happen until SpaceX gets Starship or the modified Falcon off the ground?
No, they've been promising laser links with (IIRC) v1.5 for a while.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#15SPACE LASERS!!!
Sorry. The inner child in me got far too excited by this.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#16Does this mean they've figured out satellite-to-satellite data transfer?
This is the first mention of it working that I've seen. I wonder if it's a limited deployment for Antarctica or the beginning of a large rollout.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#17How about providing free internet to China and Russia, to give the people there proper information without government oversight?
I would make a joke about equating “free internet” with “proper information” but in 2022 that joke writes itself. And let’s not get started on the “without government oversight” part of your comment.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#18How about providing free internet to China and Russia, to give the people there proper information without government oversight?
You know both Russia and China are perfectly capable of targeting and destroying satellites, yes?
Neither could destroy SpaceX satellites as fast as they can be launched. No State can.
The issue would be whether they could cause enough damage to make the orbital plane (temporarily) unusable.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#19How about providing free internet to China and Russia, to give the people there proper information without government oversight?
You think the USG that funded SpaceX/Starlink isn't going to have control over it...?
While Starlink was marketed as a boon to rural democratic internet access, those promises have been walked back and its pretty clear that it the limited bandwidth is primarily intended to increase the Pentagon/ICs communications capabilities in the field, much like the Internet itself.
The USG did not fund a swarm of satellites so that American (nor Russian, nor Chinese) farmers can watch Netflix.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#20How about providing free internet to China and Russia, to give the people there proper information without government oversight?
There are much easier, and more discrete ways for users to bypass content filters than installing a giant, radiation emitting antennae on your roof.